In June 2014, Governor John Kasich and the Ohio General Assembly allocated $12 million in state capital funds for OSC to acquire a new supercomputing system, with all of the necessary storage and networking components. We expect to request bids for the new system in the first half of 2015 and to purchase/deploy the system at some point in the 2015-16 academic year.

The new cluster is expected to quadruple the total computing capacity of the center, and an order of magnitude faster than any existing individual system at OSC. The new system also will feature accelerators, which complement the traditional Central Processing Units (CPUs). This technology provides a significant performance boost for some types of calculations.

As new systems nearly always feature faster and more efficient technologies than systems acquired only a few years earlier, it is expected that we will be able to pack much more computing power into the same or a smaller physical space. Power and cooling requirements will be larger, but the increase is small when compared to the increase in computing capacity.

The Ohio Supercomputer Center is a statewide resource that provides supercomputing services and computational science expertise to Ohio university researchers, as well as those working for Ohio industries. OSC has provided these services since it was established in 1987.

Our vision is to be a national center that drives research and innovation, and thus be a strategic transformative force behind Ohio’s new economy. We do this by empowering Ohio researchers to new innovations and discoveries that will lead to new products, businesses and services; by partnering with Ohio industries to use supercomputing and computational science as a competitive force; and, in collaboration with Ohio’s colleges and universities, in educating Ohio’s workforce in the key skills required for future jobs. The plan to realize our vision leverages the significant investments that have already been made by various organizations, most especially the Ohio General Assembly, Ohio’s Third Frontier Program, federal research institutes and key research partners in industry. Specifically, the plan concentrates on the key areas of Data Analytics, Advanced Materials, Biosciences and Energy/Environment.

At the heart of the Ohio Supercomputer Center are the supercomputers, mass storage systems and software applications. Collectively, OSC supercomputers provide a peak computing performance of more than 330 Teraflops – tech speak for 330 trillion calculations per second.

Last year, more than 1,000 academic and healthcare researchers from across Ohio took advantage of OSC’s supercomputing and storage resources, consuming more than 85 million computing hours. These users depend on four key computing, visualization and storage systems at OSC:

• HP Intel Xeon Phi Ruby Cluster, which provides clients with a total peak performance of 145 Teraflops of computing power.
• HP Intel Xeon Oakley Cluster, which provides clients with a total peak performance of 154 Teraflops of computing power, at 60 percent of the power consumption of previous systems. Oakley also has 4 gigabytes of memory per core.
• IBM AMD Opteron Glenn Cluster, which provides clients with a total peak performance of 60 Teraflops.
• Csuri Advanced GPU Environment, which leverages the unique computing properties of the Graphics Processing Units to provide a robust visualization environment. These GPUs are accessed through either the Oakley or Glenn clusters.
• Mass Storage Environment, containing more than 2 Petabytes of disk storage for a single, centralized point of control.

The name for the new supercomputer system will be selected by leadership at the Ohio Supercomputer Center from a list of top-ten names submitted through the Contest web pages. The semifinalist who first submitted that name will win the Grand Prize package:

• The new supercomputer will be named according to the winning entry;
• The Grand Prize winner and up to four guests will be invited to visit the Ohio Supercomputer Center and to see the new supercomputer during a tour of OSC’s suite at the nearby State of Ohio Computing Center* (SOCC). *For the visit to the SOCC, the winner and each guest must meet the security requirements of the SOCC.
• The Grand Prize winner will be awarded a small tablet computer, or a gift card (in an amount equivalent to the identified tablet computer) from iTunes or Amazon.com.

Each remaining semifinalist will win a First Prize:

• First-prize winners will be awarded a $20 gift card from either iTunes or Amazon.com. The semi-finalists will be determined as the individuals, outside of the Grand Prize winner, who first submit each of the entries with the ten highest numbers of submissions.

Finally, the Classroom Prize winner – the Ohio K-12 classroom submitting the name with the highest number of entries – will be awarded the Classroom Prize:

• The Classroom winner will be offered a classroom presentation by an OSC staff member about the role of supercomputing in academic and industrial research. The time, location and length of presentation will be determined by agreement between OSC and school officials.
• The Classroom winner will also be awarded awarded a small tablet computer, or a gift card (in an amount equivalent to the identified tablet computer) from iTunes or Amazon.com.

Selection of Winners: One (1) Grand Prize Winner, nine (9) First Prize Winners and one (1) Classroom Winner will be selected during the selection process, which consists of the following:

1. Round One – Judging by Number of Entries:
   1. Qualifications: Submission of entries is open only to legal residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia at the time of entry.
   2. Data Collection: The data collected for this competition will be used solely for the purposes of this competition – namely, to contact prizewinners and to determine qualification of entries – and will not be shared with any other party. Furthermore, beyond the prize winners, the data will be erased after the contest period.
   3. Process:
      1. Limit one (1) entry per person and per e-mail address per day for the duration of the Submission Period. Any entries received in excess of this maximum of one (1) entry will be disqualified. Entries received from any email address in excess of the stated limitation will be void. You must provide a valid email address to vote. Entries from invalid, non-working, or inactive email addresses will be disqualified. Entries will be subject to the terms of use of the Contest Website and any additional voting instructions that may be posted on the Contest Website.
      2. During the first round of the winner-selection process (“Round One”), all eligible Entries received during the Submission Period (Nov. 17 – TBA) will be tallied, and the entries receiving the ten highest number of entries will be advanced to Round Two. The Sponsor reserves the right to advance fewer than ten (10) Entries to Round Two, if, in its sole discretion, Sponsor does not receive a sufficient number of eligible and qualified Entries.
      3. In the event of a tie, an additional OSC associate will serve as the “tie-breaking” judge to determine which Entry/Entries will proceed to Round Two on the above stated criteria.
2. Round Two – Selection by Leadership:
   1. During the second round of the winner-selection process (“Round Two”), the grand prize winner will be selected by OSC Leadership from among the ten (10) Semifinalist Entries in each category, subject to verification of eligibility and compliance with the Official Rules, based upon how well the Entry:
      1. Reflects a strong connection to the State of Ohio
      2. Conveys a positive, innovative and pioneering spirit in a field of endeavor
      3. Is easily pronounced and understood
      4. Distinguishes itself from named systems at OSC and other supercomputer centers
   2. Also, during the second round of the winner-selection process (“Round Two”), the Classroom Prize winner will be determined as the Ohio K-12 classroom submitting the name with the highest number of entries, as long as that name meets the criteria listed above.
3. Prizes:
   1. The Contest winner – the individual entering the earliest time-stamped submission of the winning name – will be awarded the Grand Prize package, subject to the Sponsor’s discretion, which consists of the following:
      1. The new supercomputer will be named with the Grand Prize winner’s suggested name, subject to any modifications that the Sponsor may make, in its sole discretion;
      2. A tour of the Ohio Supercomputer Center for the winner and up to four (4) guests and a visit to OSC suite at the State of Ohio Computing Center* (SOCC) to see the new supercomputer. *For the visit to the SOCC, the winner and each guest must meet the security requirements of the SOCC.
      3. A small tablet computer of a make and model to be determined, or a gift card (in an amount equivalent to the as-yet unidentified tablet computer) from iTunes or Amazon.com.
   2. Each semifinalist – the individual entering the earliest time-stamped submission of each of the remaining nine (9) semifinalists – will be awarded a First Prize gift, which is a $20 gift card from iTunes or Amazon.com.
   3. The Classroom Prize winner – the Ohio K-12 classroom submitting the earliest time-stamped submission with the highest number of entries – will be awarded a small tablet computer of a make and model to be determined, or a gift card (in an amount equivalent to the as-yet unidentified tablet computer) from iTunes or Amazon.com. The Classroom Prize winner will also be offered a classroom presentation by an OSC staff member about the role of supercomputing in academic and industrial research. The time, location and length of presentation will be determined by agreement between OSC and school officials.
   4. Total maximum Estimated Retail Value (“ERV”) of each package:
      1. Grand Prize: (1) $200.00
      2. First Prize: (9) $20.00
      3. Classroom Prize: (1) $200.00
   5. Total maximum ERV of all prizes combined is approximately $580.00.